The New Abortion Stats Should Make The GOP Listen To Kirk Cameron

The number and rate of abortions dropped 13% during the first three years of President Barack Obama’s term, concludes a new report from the Guttmacher Institute. Noting that abortion access was not significantly reduced over that span, and that states with liberal abortion laws had similar rates of decline as those with more restrictive laws, the authors suggest “it is possible that fewer women experienced unintended pregnancies in 2011 than in 2008, and one factor could be the uptake of more effective contraceptive methods.”

Previously, the heyday of abstinence education during the Bush presidency did nothing to cut down on unwanted pregnancies — the rate stayed flat between 2005 and 2008. The obvious conclusion to draw from the latest numbers, whether you consider yourself pro-choice or pro-life, is we should be doing all we can to increase the use of effective contraception and further drive down the number of unintended pregnancies and, in turn, abortions.

Conservatives need not resist the simple math, despite the bizarre anti-contraception push we’ve seen from the leading Republicans since Obamacare mandated insurers cover birth control. They betray no principle regarding when life begins by accepting contraception as the best tool to reduce abortions.

But if they don’t want to listen to a liberal like me, they could listen to one of our most celebrated anti-abortion activists … Kirk Cameron.

Unlike today’s Republicans, Cameron’s Muldowney realizes he can’t win the argument without having a “plan” to prevent a flood of unwanted pregnancies. And so he thunders in his close (at the 01:33:00 mark in the video above): “I’m not saying abortion is wrong, but not training the young to approach sex and contraception as everybody’s sacred responsibility is wrong. Making one gender pay the price for our sins is wrong.”

Before Cameron was trying to disprove evolution with a banana, he was speaking common sense. More contraception = fewer abortions. He didn’t need some fancy think tank report to figure out.

25 years later, Republicans need more help. But now they have it. They could save themselves a lot of political grief, and achieve their own policy goals, if they read the Guttmacher report, and follow the logic.

A mass refusal by the public to watch Donald Trump on TV will deprive him of big ratings, which he routinely uses to create a false impression of widespread popularity.

About Bill Scher

Bill Scher is the Online Campaign Manager at Campaign for America's Future, and the executive editor of LiberalOasis.com. He is the author of Wait! Don't Move To Canada!: A Stay-and-Fight Strategy to Win Back America, a regular contributor to Bloggingheads.tv and host of the LiberalOasis Radio Show weekly podcast. He has opinion articles that have been published by the New York Times, Minneapolis Star Tribune and Omaha World-Herald, and has made appearances on CNN, MSNBC and NPR among other TV and radio outlets.